


Their Lies, in Chains

by randomlyimagine



Series: Working on from Then to Now [3]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Prequel, Undercover as Sith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-07 06:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15902421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomlyimagine/pseuds/randomlyimagine
Summary: “Nothing is going to happen. Not to me, not to you. We both know what we’re doing. The Force suppressors in these binders are disabled. Trust me, and trust yourself—nothingis going to happen.”“Except it will," Mara snapped, ”because I have to torture you.”Mara and Luke go undercover as a Sith Lord and her helpless captive. It's a stressful time for everyone.





	Their Lies, in Chains

**Author's Note:**

> Well, people said they were interested in a snippet! This is set ten days before the start of Under the Cover of Darkness. It will probably be confusing if you haven't read that (and you should! Mara and Luke get sucked back in time to the prequel trilogy before the end of this mission, while still undercover!), but that starts super en media res too actually, so starting here won't do much harm. This is canon to that fic, basically.
> 
> And no, I'm never going to write the rest of their mission. It would be significantly darker than I want to get. Oh, and for the purposes of this fic, if Darksiders can fake a Light Force presence, Lightsiders can fake a Dark one.
> 
> Enjoy!!

“This is still a terrible idea,” Mara muttered, grabbing hard at the throttle and dropping them out of hyperspace just a tad abruptly.

“It’ll be fine,” Luke said, fiddling once again with the Force binders around his wrists, poking at the edge of his wrist cuff with his fingers, in spite of the awkward angle. He understood why they were necessary, he really was fine with the plan, but that didn’t stop them from being unnerving.

Mara raised an eyebrow, but didn’t move her gaze from the view of space—and the planet—in front of them.

“I wasn’t aware Jedi Masters were allowed to fidget,” she said, voice tight and painfully even.

Luke rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. As if she weren’t well-acquainted with his occasional fidgeting.

“I guess that’s just what you drive me to,” he said.

“Oh, I’ll drive you to something, all right.”

Luke smirked. “Please. Take it as an invitation.”

Mara let out an amused huff and finally turned to look at him. “One I’d take you up on if we didn’t have to go down and scout out the meeting point.”

“Mara,” Luke said, his hands now still. “It’ll be fine. I’ve got your back, and there’s no one in the galaxy I’d rather have mine.”

“Of course not,” Mara said, but her jaw tightened further.

Luke sighed. “Mara.”

“It’s fine.”

Luke knew perfectly well it was not fine.

“Nothing is going to happen. Not to me, not to you. We both know what we’re doing. They only have one former Inquisitor. The Force suppressors in these binders are disabled. Trust me, and trust yourself— _nothing_ is going to happen.”

“Except it will, because I have to fucking torture you.” Mara’s gaze snapped back to the view of space in front of them and stayed there. Her knuckles were white on the ship’s controls.

“No, Mara,” Luke said, trying to keep his voice as soothing as possible. He wanted to reach out to touch her, to put a hand on her arm, but Mara’s ability to tolerate being touched when upset varied greatly. And with a topic that reminded her of her past… “You’re going to pretend to torture me, that’s all.” He leaned in closer, trying to keep the binders from clacking as his hands shifted in his lap. The last thing he needed was to call her attention to them further. “And I completely trust you to do it. I know you won’t hurt me.”

 _Mara,_ he sent through their bond, shoving a wave of his trust and affection and love for her along with it. He bit his lip and then, mentally crossing his fingers, risked pushing. _Seeing a piece of your past isn’t going to make me stop trusting you._

Mara’s face, already stony, turned ash-white. Not the winning gamble there, apparently.

 _Shit_ , Luke thought, this time to himself. “I’m sorry. It’s true, though. Things might not be easy, but this all will turn out okay. I just wish you’d talk to me about it before we go in, but if you’d rather not, I understand.”

Mara clenched her fingers tighter on the controls, once, twice, and then forcibly relaxed them. Slowly, she began. “I have tortured people before.” She swallowed. “I don’t want you to—” Another pause, then: “If I had chosen to kill you, back when we first met. I would not have made it fast. Well, I probably would have, because you were a Jedi and my Force abilities were intermittent at best. But if I could have gotten you into a Force suppressor first? I would have made you hurt the way I had. Worse.”

Given that the Emperor’s last command had plagued Mara with psychic seizures, debilitating weakness, and fits of insanity, on top of the death of her once-beloved mentor and the destruction of her entire life, Luke knew that was no small thing.

“But you didn’t,” he said.

“And now we’re married,” Mara replied, “and it’s great and doves are in the air, and I still have nightmares about torturing you to death. So. This isn’t exactly a nice vacation for me.”

The subject of Mara’s nightmares was not news to Luke; they did actually communicate with each other. But he hadn’t quite realized—he had known it would be hard, of course, but he had thought that—well. He had thought a lot of things.

Mara didn’t reply.

 “We can find another way,” Luke said after a long moment. “We won’t have much time, but there’s three hours until they show up. We can abort right now and figure out something else.”

Mara’s face visibly strained at that. She looked so, so tempted. Then she let out a huff that might have been a bitter laugh and might have been a sigh. “If anything else would have worked, we wouldn’t have decided on this.” She nodded to herself the tiniest bit, then fired up the thrusters and started them in toward the planet. “Come on. We’ve got some kids to un-kidnap.”

\---

Mara had left Luke in the ship to scout the meetup point herself. Neither had liked the plan, but they couldn’t risk their enemies seeing them working together. And given that whoever this particular faction of the Imperial Remnant sent would certainly be scouting the area as well, they had been left with little choice.

So, when their targets finally appeared, Mara tugged on their bond with a warning, and Luke went down and cuffed himself to the railing of the cargo hold in the _Jade Sabre_ , settling in against the back wall. After a brief debate, he went for the Aloof, Meditating Jedi Master look instead of the Already Half-Broken Jedi Master look. While the latter might make their charade go quicker down the line, it would do them no good if the Imperial Remnant operatives decided Luke’s state was too good to be believed.

And honestly, given Mara’s state of mind, Luke was a little worried about how she’d react if she came back and found him reacting to her in fear, pretending to already be tortured and half-broken.

So twenty minutes later, that was how Mara, one bounty hunter, and one poorly disguised former Inquisitor found the Master of the Jedi: sitting peacefully against the wall of his ship, ignoring his arms cuffed above him, meditating like he had not a care in the world, and refusing to react at all to their presence.

“It’s him. A perfect match for the most recent wanted posters. Even if I can't sense him in the Force,” came a voice Luke assumed was the Inquisitor, although he refused to acknowledge them by opening his eyes. Already they’d passed the first hurdle: the Inquisitor hadn’t noticed that Luke had shielded his Force presence deliberately, imitating Force suppression with a precision that had taken weeks of practice to get right.

Thankfully Inquisitors weren’t exactly known for the nuance of their training or perceptions.

“Master of the Jedi Order,” one of the other two whistled. Probably the bounty hunter, from the Outer Rim drawl. “Not so mighty now, huh?”

Luke decided that he’d hardly get a better set-up. “Mighty enough,” he said, opening his eyes.

The Inquisitor and the bounty hunter were both human—unsurprising, given the Empire’s positions on non-humans. And more to the point: they both matched the contact profiles he and Mara had been briefed with.

As for Mara herself…her face was set in a look of noticeably restrained viciousness. Mara hadn’t often looked at him with her actual, open hatred when they first met, far too careful of her privacy. She had been worried this charade would remind them both of those days, but at least for Luke, it wasn’t a concern: unlike then, he could sense her concern and discomfort through their bond, even as he noticed the shield of murderous intent and Darkness that she projected out into the Force.

“Get up,” she snapped, and before Luke could even prod her to ask whether it would be more strategic to refuse, she grabbed his tunic with the Force and yanked him to his feet, then pinned him back against the wall. It didn’t hurt, precisely, but it wasn’t comfortable either.

“Is he going to fight back?” the Inquisitor asked, and the bloodlust in _his_ smirk was real.

“Not where he could damage my ship, he’s not,” Mara said, then waved her hand and sent a strong sleep suggestion toward him. So strong his limbs started to slacken almost before he could fight it off—he tamped down on his instinctive defenses. He was supposed to be temporarily Force-blind. And so, hoping the strain on his face would be mistaken for a struggle to fight the compulsion rather than an effort not to, Luke let the suggestion pass through his shields, and gave in to unconsciousness.

\---

When Luke woke up, he was in chains. The sabotaged Force binders were still around his wrists, but traditional shackles were fastened to his arms right above them, each secured to the arm of an old, uncomfortable, and unfortunately solid metal chair. Startled and still bleary with sleep, he tried to move, only to discover his legs were secured to the chair as well.

“So, the hallowed Jedi Master is awake,” someone drawled. Luke tried to open his eyes, his situation rushing back, but before he could a fist impacted his jaw, _hard._

Blinking away the pain, Luke’s eyes finally opened to the sight of Mara driving her fist into the gut of the bounty hunter who had just punched him. Mara’s eyes gleamed bright yellow even in the dim light, and for a second an old, instinctive fear clenched in Luke’s chest. “The prisoner is _mine_ to break. That was the deal.”

But only for a second.

She was wearing colored contacts. He knew she was.

Hopefully Mara hadn’t felt his moment of doubt through the shields newly erected on her end of the bond—presumably to keep her from reacting to his reactions.

“You presume to dictate to agents of the Empire what to do with _their prisoner_ —” the Inquisitor accused, drawing himself up to his full height.

“ _My_ prisoner,” Mara snapped. “A fact you would do well to remember, before I am forced to demonstrate why _I_ was the Emperor’s Hand, and _you_ were a common Inquisitor.”

The Inquisitor’s gaze only hardened, but Mara continued without stopping. “ _I_ captured him where you never could, with the understanding that Luke Skywalker is mine to break. And mine to Turn.” She paused, then laughed. “Or do you think you can bring the strongest Jedi in the galaxy to our side yourself?”

“We do have an Inquisitor,” the bounty hunter drawled, leaning up against the wall, grip on her blaster belying the nonchalance of her stance. “Aren’t they supposed to be good at that sort of thing?”

“If your Inquisitor was so good, he would have caught Skywalker first.”

“If you were so good,” snarled the Inquisitor, who was standing by the door and visibly suppressing his rage, “you wouldn't have needed us to capture Skywalker's pathetic little students for you.”

“Excuse me?” Mara demanded.

The Inquisitor's lips twitched up in a sneer. “You heard me.”

Mara let her face fall into an expression of cool disdain. “Yes. But luckily for you, I'll ignore it. For the sake of the Empire.”

It was a good thing that Luke was the one undercover as the prisoner, because unlike Mara, his dismay at the interaction was obvious on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Mara (and Luke, who had some stowed away for his "fall") surreptitiously ditched the yellow contacts around when they were taken prisoner


End file.
